South Korean authorities raid Google regional HQ

Heart and Seoul, one will burn

Updates to this story

Google has been getting away with data mining and outright nicking stuff left right and centre here in the west. The tame UK authorities considered making an enemy of Google and let it off scot free. South Korean authorities aren't being quite as forgiving though - today they raided Google's Seoul office as part of an investigation into the Street View SNAFU.

It's nothing new: South Korean authorities reckon that Google may have been swiping data illegally while it prepared to launch Street View. Google has claimed that the Street View scandal had been down to rogue Google engineers who were using their Google developer time to work on dodgy code that mines for info in networks. However the world plus dog is raising an eyebrow at Schmidt and his cronies.

Yesterday we reported that Schmidt has been warning of an incoming "data tsunami" which isn't going to happen with the consent of the public, but rather to them. We also mentioned how Google is buying in its first set of UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles - meaning we're going to be a lot more careful about sunbathing in the nude on top of TechEye Towers. It's also in bed with the CIA.

Google has not yet released any official comment on the raid though we suspect it will be as chilled out as ever - saying it takes security and privacy seriously, that it needs to learn from its mistakes and all the rest of it.

It'll be interesting to see if South Korea bucks the trend and takes a hardline stance on the company but somehow we doubt it. South Korea has enough to worry about with DPRK agents lurking around the company looking for information to bring back across the hostile DMZ border - it definitely doesn't need a worldwide set of California corporate upstarts taking the mickey either.

We wonder if it was the likes of Gates, Jobs, Schmidt and Zuckerberg that Christ was banging on about when he said the geek shall inherit the Earth. He said that, right!?